by Diana-Abasi Udoh

Yes it is purely lips service and hypocrisy whenever our political, religious and traditional leaders seek to divorce religion and ethnicity from our politics, when they are the very guilty culprits promoting and sustaining this over vexed topic.

Yes tell us, how we divorce the two monsters (ethnicity and religion) from our politics when about twelve(12) states in the northern parts of the country have adopted the Sharia penal code against the feelings and mood of other religion observers particularly the Christians who also desire to live freely and do business.

There have persistently been crises in regions all across the country and it doesn’t need a setting up of a panel of enquiry to ascertain that the major root cause of these crises has always certainly found ethnicity and religion at the bottom of these conflicts.

The Boko Haram insurgency has repeatedly seen the dreaded leader make publicized statements, and in one of them he claimed that Allah asked him to sell girls and he has also claimed to have converted all the kidnapped Chibok girls to Muslim faith when statistics proved that the majority of these girls were originally Christians. So how do we divorce religion and ethnicity from our affairs when these innocent Chibok girls were forced to dish their faith by gunpoint against their will and wishes?

But we are not done asking these disturbing questions many pretend don’t exist. How do we stay united devoid of ethnicity and religion in our politics when during the run up to the 2011 Presidential elections a section of the country led by eminent political and religious leaders pressurized it on the rest of us in the nation that it was exclusively the right of a section of the country to produce the President that should lead the rest of us. These leaders came together and mooted a northern consensus arrangement which sought to unconstitutionally exclude and bar any Nigerian who is constitutionally entitled to vie and seek for the office of the President from presenting his or herself for that office if he or she was not from the north. And failure for other regions or sections of the country to comply with these threats will ensure the country remained ungovernable for he or she who dared to float these directives. Hence some parts of our dear country have remained practically ungovernable.

Oh yes, it is worth noting that the only qualified Nigerians who were allowed by these leaders led by former Finance Minister Adamu Ciroma were expectedly from the North and exclusively of Muslim faith; Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Senator Bukola Saraki, General Aliyu Gusau and General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. And also many eminent northern traditional and political leaders expressly and publicly voiced their support to this arrangement which ran parallel to the constitution and sought to deprive every other Nigerians of other faith and ethnicity the rights to aspire to the highest office in the land.

Now welcome to Nigeria, as these same leaders Atiku, Saraki, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai et al are now the ones claiming that Mr. President is rather the one seeking to divide the country along ethnic and religious lines. I wonder how Mr. President is performing such abracadabra. It seems Nigerians are rather shortsighted and forget events and who said and did what so fast. But most of us still keep a diary on these events and who said what.

Curiously again we claim we aren’t divided along ethnic and religious lines yet the presumptive candidates for the nation’s major opposition party the All Progressives Congress (APC) have been heavily circled around the idea of a Muslim – Muslim Presidential ticket for some time now. It is worth observing if it is a taboo for them to flirt with a Christian – Christian Presidential ticket idea after all we can identify highly competent Presidential hands in their midst which includes Leadership Group founder Sam Nda-Isaiah and Gov. Rochas Okorocha of Imo State whose only limitation to grabbing the ticket is being Christians.

Now many eminent Nigerians have choose to hide their heads in the sands like an ostrich and pretend that it doesn’t matter where our Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates are sought from, and it is inconsequential of what religious faith they observe as far as they are competent hands. Well the rest of us who are stupid and dumb know for a fact that these convenient vocabularies will change tune if a Christian Presidential candidate were to have been pushed on the APC Presidential ticket.  But we will adopt a siddon look approach and see where all these is leading us to as a nation.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

Op-Ed Editor